Freight car graffiti, Part 3: more examples

I began this series with a post showing my method of making paper overlays of freight car graffiti, either starting with photographs I had taken, or from a very large published collection in a 2006 book, Freight Train Graffiti, by Roger Gastman, Darin Rowland, and Ian Sattler. That post can be found here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2020/01/my-latest-column-in-mrh.html . That was followed by additional examples of paper overlays and decals in Part 2, developing further the techniques shown in the first post. Part 2 is at this link: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2020/01/freight-car-graffiti-part-2.html .
     Continuing to work on this technique, I borrowed several cars from Seth Neumann’s layout, set in 1999 on the Union Pacific in the East and South Bay areas around San Jose. They represent a variety of car types, and offer a good range of possibilities for graffiti and weathering.
     I will begin with a typical “modern” cement hopper, an ACF Center Flow prototype, with light weathering applied by Seth. I added graffiti to both sides. First, on the right side, I used a Blair Line decal from their set no. 2257:

On the other side, I added one of my paper overlays (the word “kove”), taken from a photo of this graffiti piece on a wall (shown below), which I simply scaled to HO size, printed out on paper, cut out, thinned with sandpaper, and applied with canopy glue. That technique is shown also in my first two posts, cited in the top paragraph of the present post.

Here is the car, with an additional Blair Line decal at right, part of a graffiti piece in their set no. 2263, and with some cement staining added:

     A second car was a pressure-differential covered  hopper car leased by North American Car Company (NAHX). I used several decals from the Dave’s Decals set I have (no. 6028), since these work best on cars with a light color. Here is the left side, with no weathering yet:

And here is the other side, with light weathering added; the graffiti piece at the right of the car side is a paper overlay from a wall image. The other graffiti is Dave’s Decals.

     Seth also provided me with two large covered hoppers, ACF Center Flow cars of 5700 cubic foot capacity (often used for light cargo like plastic pellets). One of them was an Arco Polymers, Inc. car in bright blue.

On the right side of the car, I applied the graffiti shown below. The large graffiti piece at the right end of the car side is taken from Freight Train Graffiti, page 210, and was applied as a paper overlay; the decal at the left of the side is a Blair Line decal from set no. 2262 (with this or any of these images, you can click on it to enlarge the photo).

 I will come back in  future post to this car and what I did on its other side, as well as adding weathering.
     These cars were interesting tests of the application method and extended my experience beyond the first efforts, reported in detail in my article in Model Railroad Hobbyist (issue for January 2020), as summarized in my first post (see top paragraph of the present post). I continue to work on these cars and will report further.
Tony Thompson